The Zapotec and Chatino Survey is the joint work of Mexican and US-based linguistic researchers and Zapotec and Chatino native speakers trained to apply an over 1300 item questionaire in over 100 population centers of Oaxaca and Veracruz. With subentries, each survey generates about 3000 utterances. Native speaker assistants transcribed the recordings usign the application ELAN, which produces searchable text corpora linked to audio files. The project was directed by Dr. Terrence Kaufman and Dr. Mark Sicoli and was funded by INALI, the National Institute of Indigenous Languages of Mexico. This online archive was made possible through support from the Documenting Endangered Languages Program of the National Science Foundation (BCS1263671).

A linguistic researcher applies the Zapotec and Chatino Survey with a native speaker. The survey questions are proposed in Spanish (designed in a way to produce a minimum of contact-language interference) and the responses are given in the indigenous language.